Jimmy Jones

Jimmy Jones, who has died aged 82, had two distinctive pop hits in 1960 with
Handy Man and Good Timin’ .

Jimmy JonesPhoto: POPPERFOTO

11:58AM BST 07 Aug 2012

Jones performed in a sweet falsetto singing style which, although much imitated since, was then something of a novelty, at least in Britain. Both Handy Man and Good Timin’ made the British Top 10, with Handy Man climbing to No 3 in March 1960 and Good Timin’ topping the charts the following June, remaining in the hit parade for an impressive 15 weeks and enabling Jones to undertake a British tour.

Written by Jones himself, Handy Man was released in June 1959 as the B-side to his single The Search is Over. But only in October of that year did the record take off, when a disc jockey in Pennsylvania started playing it, and once it had gone to No 1 in Pittsburgh, success spread from there. It became Jones’s signature number.

While it just failed to make the No 1 spot in the American Billboard chart, Handy Man was much covered by other artists, including in 1977, James Taylor, who won a second Pop Male Vocal Grammy with his wry, laid-back interpretation.

Although Jimmy Jones was best-known as a rhythm and blues singer, his background lay in the doo-wop style — he had sung with an American group called The Berliners, who later became known as The Spirits of Rhythm and, later still, The Sparks of Rhythm.

Latterly Jones enjoyed a revival of interest in Britain, owing to his popularity on the British Northern soul circuit. “Jimmy was a fabulous sensation over in Britain,” said his wife Mattie Jones. “They loved him in Britain. He was hot.”

James (Jimmy) Jones was born on June 2 1930 in Birmingham, Alabama. Having moved to New York with his family, he began his showbusiness career as a tap dancer.

He joined The Berliners in 1954, and after their change of name, recorded several doo-wop tracks with them in 1955 before leaving to form his own group, The Savoys. This too went through several identity changes, becoming The Pretenders (after The Platters song) and recording material for several labels over the ensuing few years, some as The Jones Boys, before disbanding in 1959.

Later that year Jones embarked on a solo career. When the MGM-owned Cub label paired him with the producer Otis Blackwell, writer of hits such as All Shook Up and Great Balls Of Fire, Jones played him Handy Man, a song he had written in his days with The Sparks of Rhythm.

Blackwell was impressed and decided to produce the record himself. He had considered having a flute on it, but when the flute player failed to turn up, Blackwell whistled the part himself, which (with Jones’s high-pitched voice) made the song distinctive. By early 1960 Handy Man had shot into the Top Five on both the pop and R&B charts.

Although he had another Top 10 hit with Good Timin’ later that year, Jones had no subsequent chart success, although he continued to record through most of the 1960s.

He remained with Cub until 1962, barely making it into the lower reaches of the charts with That’s When I Cried and, in March 1961, I Told You So (which reached only No 33 in Britain).

Although between 1965 and 1967 he recorded tracks for the Roulette, Parkway, and Bell labels, none restored his commercial standing. But as artists like James Taylor and Del Shannon released their cover versions, Handy Man remained a perennial favourite.

In 2002, as a tribute to Jones’s continued popularity in Britain’s Northern soul clubs, a double compact disc set was released called Good Timin’: The Anthology.